“[That is] another thing that adds to this up-and-down weekend, emotionally speaking,” the eight-time race winner said. “We really want to finish on a high. This morning we ended up watching FP1 together and we were a bit sad both of us for what had happened, because obviously we rely on each other in trying to win this constructors’ and we really want to end these four years together in the best possible way.
“But sometimes things happen outside of our control and that’s what happened today. But we’ve had an amazing relationship, amazing four years, and we’ll give it all until the very last lap in order to end these four years together in the best possible way.”
FP1: Leclerc sets the pace during first practice in Abu Dhabi as several rookies join the action
And in terms of that constructors’ fight with McLaren – the team that topped the timesheets in FP2 – Leclerc conceded: “The McLaren seems to be quicker unfortunately so for now they’ve got the upper hand, but we know that it can swing one way or the other very quickly.
“We’ve got to stay on top of everything, and it won’t be finished until the very end. As we’ve seen unfortunately today on our side, we’ve had a problem but, yeah, I’m not wishing a problem to anybody else, we’ll just focus on ourselves and try to do an amazing recovery on Sunday.”
On the other side of the garage, Sainz was pleased with his performance in second practice, having sat out the first session while Arthur Leclerc took the wheel, but admitted that Ferrari may need to find some performance overnight in order to challenge McLaren.
